are there examples of open code harvested by commercial developers?
thanks for responding to this question also via: http://p2pfoundation.net/Special:RecentChanges?title=Talk:Complete_Guide_To_... Johannes asks: Regarding "*There’s a critical distinction here and that is that your code is out there and anyone can start a company to commercialize this code. Bear in mind that it is very hard (often impossible) to reverse a decision to open-source*": It is IMO an option to provide an open kernel, especially to ensure interoperability, so others can enrich by own components and keep code of other components private. Though I would prefer the donation model (instead of selling), because it offers the opportunity, that more people may use the software. In consequence the percentage of people willing to give can be lower to achieve a comparable earning. My question is: *are there examples of open code harvested by commercial developers*? Johannes <http://p2pfoundation.net/User:JohnnyB> 10. September 2011 -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
My question is: are there examples of open code harvested by commercial developers?
I'm not sure what 'harvested' means, and by 'commercial' I assume you mean 'proprietary' (since all Free Software/Open Source *must* allow commercial use - by those definitions): Microsoft has BSD code in their network stack. Open c:\windows\system32\ftp.exe in a hex editor you will see "Regents of the University of California". The bulk of Apple's OSX came from "open code". This is legal because those Licenses allow it. The GNU GPL disallows linking to proprietary code in an attempt to stop proprietary shops from re-enclosing the virtual commons. Patrick Anderson http://SocialSufficiencyCoalition.BlogSpot.com
Hello Johannes, The original article is warning traditional market participants that open source means giving your blueprints away. Yes, you have the option of giving away only part of your designs. For those of us not interested in domination games, the larger point is that openness and price can be orthogonal. We can engage with the old system while developing it's replacement. My favorite example is RedHat, for which the word 'harvest' seems to fit quite well. Fedora Linux is a community project fostered by RedHat and every few years they will take the latest version and further develop it for commercial users which must (and are more than willing to) pay a lot of money. Users without money can then take advantage of RedHat's engineering efforts by using one of the RHEL derivatives such as CentOS or Scientific Linux. -Karl
participants (3)
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Karl Robillard -
Michel Bauwens -
Patrick Anderson